Connective tissue (e.g., tendons, ligaments, cartilage) is prone to damage due to the stress imposed on it through physical activity such as sports and exercise. Such damage is commonly manifested as tears, ruptures, or other similar defects. The most common methods of repairing such defects in connective tissue such as cartilage include osteochondral autograft transfer system (OATS) and mosaicplasty procedures. Such cartilage transfer procedures involve moving healthy cartilage from an area of the knee that is non-weight bearing to a damaged cartilage area of the knee. In mosaicplasty, plugs of healthy cartilage and bone are taken from a healthy cartilage area and moved to replace the damaged cartilage area of the knee. Multiple tiny plugs are used and once embedded, resembles a mosaic. With the OATS procedure, the plugs are typically large. Therefore, the surgeon only needs to move one or two plugs of healthy cartilage and bone to the damaged area of the knee. OATS is used with patients with minimal cartilage damage, usually as a result of trauma, with available healthy cartilage for transfer. While such procedures are generally met with success in younger patients, complications such as post-operative bleeding, pain, swelling, deep vein thrombosis may arise in addition to the requirement of maintaining a rigorous physical therapy routine. Also, widespread cartilage damage cannot be treated with such procedures as there is insufficient healthy cartilage available in the patient. Still further, these techniques result in open harvest sites that must heal on their own or be filled with a backfill plug.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for safe and effective materials and techniques to aid in the repair or replacement of damaged connective tissue such as cartilage.